Less than three hours after the note's discovery Monday night, a St. Johns County deputy sheriff found the woman and her husband at 1:15 a.m. south of Jacksonville in a rest area along Interstate 95.

The man in the passenger seat of the woman's stolen Ford Mustang turned out to be William James Griffin, 27, of Kissimmee, who had threatened to kill his wife, Beth, and was forcing her to flee with him to North Carolina, authorities said.

William Griffin broke away from the deputy, ran across I-95 and hid in the woods beyond the southbound lanes, authorities said. Police dogs, assisted by a sheriff's helicopter, flushed him from the woods about 3 a.m., authorities said.

Deputies credited Beth Griffin's mention of a friend's telephone number in the lipstick plea with ending her night of terror.

``Her friend was the only one who could tell us who she was and what type of vehicle they were in because she had seen them earlier in the evening,'' said Glen Thomas, a Brevard County sheriff's agent.

Thomas broadcast the initial kidnap alert after seeing the lipstick plea in the ladies room of the Starvin' Marvin food store at I-95 and State Road 520. Finding the message scrawled above the toilet-paper dispenser, instead of in a more obvious place, persuaded him to take the message seriously, Thomas said.

``It didn't look like a joke. I wanted to treat it as real,'' Thomas said. If it was a joke, ``I figured I could laugh later.''

The telephone number in the message rang at an Exxon gas station on Vine Street in Kissimmee. The clerk on duty Monday night told Kissimmee police that her friend Beth Griffin showed up earlier in the evening after discovering that her husband had escaped from the Orange County Jail.

Authorities outside the jail did not know about the escape.

William Griffin had walked away about 7 p.m. from a work-release program on Lucerne Terrace in Orlando. Absences from the unlocked building for nonviolent prisoners are not reported to state prosecutors until the next day, when an arrest warrant is sought, Orange County Corrections spokesman Allen Moore said.

``Most of the four or five people a month who walk away are back in custody within 72 hours,'' Moore said. Most often, they disappear to avoid taking drug or alcohol tests. The Sheriff's Office and local police would have been notified immediately had William Griffin escaped from the main jail, he said.

William Griffin joined the work-release program Friday after his wife interceded on his behalf. He was serving a year for domestic violence, grand theft and dealing in stolen property. Jail officials insisted he first complete a six-week victim-impact course, but William Griffin's attorney persuaded Circuit Judge Thomas Mihok to overrule them, Moore said.

At 8:20 p.m. Monday, Griffin surprised his wife by showing up at the gas station in Kissimmee. She unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to return to jail, Kissimmee police said.

After her rescue, Beth Griffin told Kissimmee police that she drove her husband to the Kissimmee lakefront, where they argued. He threatened to kill her when she refused to leave with him for North Carolina, Detective John Lewis said.

William Griffin forced his wife to leave with him after he snatched a spare key to the Mustang from a string around her neck, Lewis said.

The lipstick plea was the second attempt to summon help. Beth Griffin asked her husband to stop earlier during their drive from Kissimmee to I-95 in Brevard, but he followed her into the restroom and watched while she was in the stall, authorities said.

Griffin started to do the same thing at Starvin' Marvin, but there was another woman in the restroom, deputies said. A security camera in the parking lot caught William Griffin on tape.

``It's obvious he was guarding the door,'' Thomas said.

Griffin was being held Tuesday night in St. Augustine. St. Johns deputies charged him with resisting arrest with violence while considering other charges. A warrant for his arrest on charges of kidnapping, robbery and grand-theft robbery await him in Kissimmee, police said.